Overlook Landscaping

 

6/7/26 Waterfront Overlook Walk

A cruise ship was in, and soccer fans were already in town for the impending World Cup, which meant only one thing: Pike Place Market was more mobbed than usual on Sunday. Fortunately for USk Seattle, our outing focused on spacious Waterfront Overlook Walk, which feels unoppressive even when lots of people are enjoying this city gem.

After sketching there several times since it opened less than two years ago, what caught my attention this time was how lush all the landscaping has become. Lupine and many small floral bushes were blooming everywhere (which the bees seemed to appreciate). I decided to make the landscaping the “story” of my first Overlook visit of the summer (I anticipate more . . . some of my best-used tax dollars are here).

Blick Urban Sketch Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/4/26 Blick's Urban Sketch palette (photo reference)

Yesterday I emulated the “Blick Exclusive” edition of Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels with the Botanical and Earth Tones theme. In today’s post, I recreate the Urban Sketch set (of course). As I mentioned yesterday, my Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210) have gone missing, and both appear in this palette too, so they are absent in my recreation. I didn’t think Cobalt Blue was necessary since Ultramarine is included, but a green seemed essential, so I subbed in Phthalocyanine Green (710).

While the color range is wide enough for most urban scenes, it’s a bit heavy on browns and other earth tones for my needs, and including both Sepia and Black seems nearly redundant. I use Light Gray (intended for pavement, I suppose?)  so infrequently that I didn’t know what to do with it in my sketch. I ended up using it mostly to block in shapes that I colored over later with other colors. It’s curious that the palette includes Lemon Yellow, Golden Yellow and Orange while the Botanical and Earth Tones set includes only one yellow. (A-ha – the tin illustration shows a classic yellow taxicab.)

Phthalocyanine Green stands in for Emerald in my recreated palette.

With blue and green in the palette, I knew what I needed in my reference photo: Trash cans! Maybe I was influenced by the theme’s name, but I found this palette comfortable and easy to use. I only needed to take artistic license with the car’s color (yellow cabs are extremely rare in these parts). Not seeing an obvious way to use Vermilion and Carmine with this reference photo, I had to start a dumpster fire (ha-ha).

While Phthalocyanine Green is ideal for trash cans, I find it too unnatural for foliage. Using this palette taught me, however, that when warmed with Lemon Yellow, it’s not bad.

As I did with yesterday’s palette, I balked at too many colors being used for no reason – and then I reminded myself that no one said I had to use them all. In any case, I enjoyed using these palettes as a fun exercise in stretching my color vocabulary. It was relaxing, too, because I didn’t have to think about which colors to choose. I’ll add this to my doomscrolling prevention toolkit.

The two themes I emulated are each wide-ranging enough that they could be used as standalone sets. The Blick Exclusive series has two more sets – Fantasy Dreamscape and Floral Expressions. Fantasy Dreamscape is overly heavy on cool hues, and the floral set wouldn’t be adequate for urban scenes, making both less versatile. If I come across reference photos that might be appropriate for those palettes, I might try them someday.

In the meantime, I have a more pressing matter at hand: Where could my Emerald Green and Cobalt Blue be . . .?

Blick Botanical and Earth Tones Palette (Tina Edition)

 

6/3/26 A hot mess of 13 colors (photo reference)

Cruising casually on the Blick site one day (as one does), I came across a series of new products: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II sets with a “Blick Exclusive” label! At first my heart skipped a beat: What?? New Neo II colors that only Blick can sell?? It didn’t take long for my heart rate to return to normal; the colors aren’t new at all. Caran d’Ache has curated four themed palettes for Blick to sell exclusively. The 15 colors in each set are all from Cd’A’s standard Neocolor II line, the sets come in Cd’A’s standard red tins, and Blick’s name is on the sleeves.

It’s an interesting co-marketing play. I know that Blick is widespread in the US, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the art supply store is ubiquitous enough for Cd’A to put the store’s name on one of its bestselling products.

In any case, the most interesting part to me was looking at the colors that had been selected for each theme. I’ve found it to be an intriguing creative exercise to try on a palette that someone else has designed. The first time I tried it was several years ago with the Beya Rebaï Neocolor II sets. More recently, fashion designer Kévin Germanier’s surprising palette of colored pencils inspired me in unexpected ways (which led to my own palette-making discoveries that I’m still applying).

Since I own almost all the Neocolor II colors, I thought it would be fun to recreate a couple of the “Blick exclusive” palettes and try them. Today’s post is my version of the Botanical and Earth Tones palette. A couple of colors are missing here: Cobalt Blue (160) and Emerald Green (210). (I’m sure I own both, as my swatch page includes them, yet both have mysteriously disappeared from my studio. Annoying.) I thought the 13 I had were plenty, though, to make a sketch.

Two colors missing from the palette: Cobalt Blue and Emerald Green

While I do understand that no one is expected to use all the colors in the set in a single work, I gave myself that challenge just for fun. My natural tendency is to minimize my palettes to the extreme, but my recent bingeing of Colin Woodward’s YouTubes and taking his mini-workshop have pushed me to try being more maximalized.

Since the theme is flowers and plants, I dug through my reference photos to find one with lots of both, especially in the colors of the palette. The hot mess shown here is the result. The greens were all familiar to me, as I use them often (one is in my current daily-carry). I found it odd, though, that the set includes two olive-y greens that are so similar. I suppose the light blue was intended for the sky in landscapes, but the photo I chose had none visible, so I tossed it around at will. I didn’t learn much from this palette except that 13 colors were too many for this sketch, and I winced at the lack of palette cohesion. Making the scribbly mess was fun, though.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post when I recreate another “Blick exclusive” palette.

Thornton Creek in the Morning

 

6/2/26 Thornton Creek

Temps climbed to the mid-80s on Tuesday – unusual for this early in June (though I suppose it’s becoming the new normal). Getting out early for my walk to beat the heat, I went north to Thornton Creek. A couple of weeks ago when Kim and I had such a good time there, It was late afternoon. In the early morning, different parts of the creek’s plantings were illuminated, so it was like having a whole new landscape to choose from.

I inadvertently mixed this green at Gas Works Park -- a happy accident.

More green notes: A couple of days ago, I noted that my current greens were working well together, but I was still using them mostly conventionally. Then the next day at Gas Works Park, intending to use Inktense Iron Green, I inadvertently grabbed the overly cool Caran d’Ache Dark English Green (729) and mixed it with Spring Green (470) for the hillside foliage. Although the result was surprising, it made an interesting complement to the rusty, reddish gas works. That combo reminded me of the CYMK primary triads I had played with extensively several summers ago.

At Thornton Creek, I decided to use the same pairing for the maple tree’s foliage. The result is a little more edgy than my usual, “safe” mixes – and I like it! Maybe there’s hope for me yet, even if it takes a happy accident (as Bob Ross would say).

Gas Works Revisited

 

6/1/26 Gas Works Park

The grass is still littered with goose poop -- some things never
change. The fuzzy goslings sure are cute, though!

The deconstruction and removal work at Gas Works Park was supposed to be complete by now, so I went to see what the result looked like. Other than part of a long, horizontal pipe that had been removed, I was surprised to find that not much else had changed. The intention of the work was to eliminate structures that could be climbed, reducing the risk of falls. I had been expecting more of the pipes, ladders, catwalks and other connecting structures to be gone. Looking around, I could still see plenty of structures that a determined individual could figure out ways to climb, but if that’s the extent of the work, I’m relieved.

When I was at the park with Urban Sketchers last month, I sketched the eastern half of the primary gas works. This time I sketched the western half. Next time I visit, I’ll remember to bring my panorama landscape sketchbook so I can get the whole structure at once. Shown below are photos I took before and after the removal.

5/2/26 The long, horizontal pipework is still in place.

6/1/26 The middle section of the long pipe has been removed. 

Two Trees (Geeky Light and Color Talk)

 

5/31/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood, 1:22 p.m.

Most plein air painters will tell you that the worst light of the day are the hours around high noon; they favor early morning and late afternoon for both the color and the angle of light.

The sketch at top of post was made at around 1:30 p.m. PDT. Call me contrary, but I think it’s interesting and more challenging to take on that disdained high-noon light. Instead of a convenient crescent of shadow from a lower sun that shows a tree’s form, each cluster of foliage on each branch has both a highlight and a shadow.

About two hours later on the second leg of my walk, I sketched another tree, this time with the less challenging, classic crescent of shadow (below). This close to the summer solstice, the “late-afternoon” sun is hardly low in the sky, but it’s still interesting to see how much difference it makes.

5/31/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood, 3:33 p.m.

Green notes: I’m still experimenting with the same set of greens I refreshed my palette with a few weeks ago. For the most part, it’s working out, though it feels a bit conventional. I haven’t figured out how to shake up that part yet. I am pleased, however, with the two main greens that I’ve been using for trees: Caran d’Ache Neocolor II Spring Green (470) for the sunlit side and Derwent Inktense Iron Green (1310) for the shaded side. Initially I had chosen Iron Green, which is very cool and dark, for conifers (it’s the green I used most in the sketch I showed yesterday). When warmed up with Spring Green, though, it works well for the shaded parts of all kinds of trees.

Blue notes: Whenever I’m using a limited palette of three to five colors (which is nearly always), I think very carefully about what to do about a clear sky. I want to make it blue, but if I haven’t used that blue anywhere else in the sketch, it feels tacked onto the palette. It’s a dilemma that I didn’t know how to resolve until I heard Eleanor Doughty articulate the solution in her Domestika course (which I took a few years ago):

If she brings in a color from outside the limited range she has established for a sketch, she tries to use it in at least one more spot so the color won’t be random. It’s a sound principle for a cohesive palette, and now I follow it whenever I can.

For years, my favorite Seattle blue-sky color was Caran d’Ache Middle Cobalt Blue (660). However, that bright, warm blue has little use except as sky. With that in mind, I recently went through all my water-soluble blues to see if I could find one that would make a good sunny sky when watered down but is also dark enough to play double-duty as a shadow hue. Currently I’m trying Caran d’Ache Blue (what – no fancy name?) (260). For the street shadows in the late-afternoon sketch above, I mixed that blue with the Derwent Iron Green used in the trees, and I think they hold the palette together nicely.

That orange shining through on the late-afternoon tree trunk? Although not very apparent, I also used it very subtly in the trees to the left of the cars. Catching that bit of light was my proudest moment in that sketch!

Zeta Experiment at Javasti

5/29/26 View from Cafe Javasti, Maple Leaf neighborhood

After our one day of summer when temps were in the high 70s and even low 80s in some parts, we were back to winter the following day. After a walk, I felt warm enough to get a table outside Café Javasti, where these conifers gave me an ideal opportunity for an experiment.

From experiences long ago, I had dismissed Stillman & Birn's Zeta sketchbook from use with wet media. While its smooth surface is beautiful with ink, markers and especially Derwent Drawing pencils, it’s just not sized appropriately for washes or generous spritzing. I’ve used water-soluble pencils with Zeta before, but it had been a while, and I wanted to refresh my memory on that combo. Trees like these are an ideal subject because I want to retain the detail of their distinctive, feathery limbs, which is more difficult to do with a toothy paper like Hahnemühle.

I like this result: A little water deepened the colors without obscuring the details, and it was dry enough for the Zeta surface to take it.